His friends all wore expressions that said they'd seen this coming a mile away.
"Really."
I nodded. "Have the divorce papers drawn up and signed for me. Tomasso, the syndicate you run now is one we built together. If we're getting divorced, I'm taking half. That's fair, isn't it?"
"More than fair. Take all of it if you want. It's just a formality anyway!"
He shot his buddies a cocky look, and the whole group burst into applause and whistles. The sound bounced off the hospital corridor tiles, sharp and hollow, the way men celebrate when they think they've already won.
"Tomasso, you legend! Living the dream with a woman on each arm. Can't even be jealous!"
My eyes were ice. He didn't notice.
The men around him clapped his shoulders, grinning like soldiers after a clean hit. Not one of them looked at me. Not one of them understood what had just been set in motion. They saw a woman agreeing to step aside. They didn't see the Valente blood in my veins turning cold and quiet, the way it does before a reckoning.
Catarina said she was hungry. She wanted some soup.
Tomasso rounded up his friends and left immediately to get it for her. On his way out, he turned back to me. "Giovanna, are you hungry? Want me to grab you something?"
"I'm fine. Don't bother."
"Then take good care of Catarina for me, will you? She said her chest is sore from the milk coming in..."
The door clicked shut. The bodyguard posted outside shifted his weight, leather creaking faintly, and then there was nothing. Just the two of us now.
The fluorescent light hummed above us. Somewhere down the hall, a monitor beeped in steady rhythm. The private wing Tomasso had secured for her was quiet as a confessional.
Catarina didn't have to pretend anymore. She turned to me with a look that was pure provocation. The softness she wore for Tomasso fell away like a mask lifted, and what was underneath had teeth.
"Well, well. I have to say, I'm impressed. Your husband is sleeping with another woman, talking about divorcing you to put someone else's baby under his name, and you don't even flinch? That's some next-level doormat energy."
I watched her in silence.
Her lips curled. One by one, she undid the buttons of her hospital gown, slow and deliberate, the way she tucked her hair behind her left ear when she was performing. Everything about this woman was choreography.
"You know what the difference between us is, Giovanna?"
The figure she revealed made my brow tighten.
"Your body? Let's see how long that lasts after you're done breastfeeding."
"Oh, I won't be breastfeeding. You think these are natural? Why would I ruin them? You know what Tomasso told me?" She tilted her chin up, the hospital light catching her collarbone like she was posing for a painting. "He said you're boring. No fun at all. And your body doesn't compare to mine. I'm an E cup, sweetheart."
So even her chest was fake.
Tomasso really had no standards. The Don of the Rossetti Family, the man I had built from nothing, couldn't tell the difference between a woman who would die for him and one who was performing for his wallet.
"Are you done?"
"Not even close. I'm telling you to get lost. Stop standing between us, or I'll make your life a living hell. My husband is dead. I need a new one, and Tomasso is the man I picked. I'm never letting him go—"
Before she could finish, my hand was already in the air.
The slap cracked across her face.
The sound was clean. Final. It cut through the hum of the fluorescent light and the distant beeping of monitors and left a silence so absolute that the room seemed to hold its breath. My wedding band caught the light as my hand fell back to my side. I turned it once with my thumb. Twice.
Then I stopped.
"You hit me?!" She froze, one hand flying to her cheek. The red was already blooming across her skin, vivid against the white hospital sheets behind her. She lunged to hit me back, but I caught her arm and swung again.
"You—"
"Yeah, I hit you." My voice was steady. Not raised. Not shaking. Steady the way my father's voice was steady when he passed judgment in his study, the way Valente women have always sounded when they've stopped asking and started telling. "That first one was for being shameless enough to seduce another woman's husband."
A second slap landed clean. Her head snapped to the side. The room was so quiet I could hear the bodyguard outside shift his weight again, uncertain, listening.
"That one's for climbing into a married man's bed when your own husband hasn't been dead five months and you were nine months pregnant. Fausto took a bullet for Tomasso, and this is how you honor his memory."
Then a third.
The sound of it hung in the air like the last note of a bell.
"And that's for destroying a family and not feeling an ounce of remorse."
Three slaps. She stood there, stunned stupid. Her cheek was scarlet and swelling. Her hospital gown hung open. The provocation was gone from her face, replaced by something raw and animal, the look of a woman who had never been hit back before.
The silence settled over us like dust after a detonation.
Then she screamed, clawing her way off the bed. "Giovanna, I'll kill you!"
She shoved me hard. I hit the ground, and a sharp pain shot through my lower abdomen. Not a bruise. Not a cramp. Something deeper. Something wrong. Dread flooded through me instantly, cold and total, like ice water poured into my chest. I gritted my teeth and dragged myself up, bracing against the wall to stay on my feet. My hand pressed against my stomach. My fingers were shaking.
She swung at me, her palm connecting with my face. "You hit me? You think I'm someone you can push around? Those three slaps? I'm paying them back double!"
She raised her hand for a second strike, but footsteps echoed in the hallway outside. Multiple sets. Heavy. The sound of men returning.
Her arm froze mid-swing.
The rage vanished from her face so fast it was like watching someone change channels. In one fluid motion, she snatched the baby from the bassinet, dropped him onto the floor from a low height, then threw herself down beside him, curling over the infant and wailing as if the world were ending.
The transformation took less than three seconds. From fury to theater. From predator to victim. She tucked her hair behind her left ear with a trembling hand and screamed louder, the sound pitched to carry through the door and down the corridor to where Tomasso's footsteps were getting closer.
The baby's screams tangled with hers, filling the room.
I stood there clutching my stomach, my body locked in place. The pain in my abdomen pulsed in time with my heartbeat, but I couldn't move. I couldn't process what I'd just witnessed.
Catarina had hurt her own child.
He'd just been born. Hours old. Still wrinkled and red and smelling of new life. And she'd thrown him on the ground without a second thought, the way a soldier discards a spent cartridge. Not out of madness. Not out of desperation. Out of calculation. Because the footsteps were coming, and she needed a story, and her own newborn son was nothing more than a prop in the performance.
I stood against the wall with my hand pressed to my stomach, and I understood, with a clarity that cut through the pain like a blade, exactly what kind of woman had moved into my home.
